


jonah on the ocean

by shamecube (irritable)



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F, feel like this is a little bit pretentious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 17:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16707187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irritable/pseuds/shamecube
Summary: Lie first, rectify later. Deceit is Jamie's lifeboat.





	jonah on the ocean

**Author's Note:**

> movement by hozier came for my life
> 
> anyway i found this in my notes from a year ago? maybe 2? i ran it through a spell check once and here it is
> 
> edit (01/19): i’ve polished this a little

She'd never voice the things she thinks when she’s with Moriarty, when _joanjoanjoan_  is gasped into the bruises on her chest, when she's reduced to a sweaty, trembling mess.

Admitting it, out loud, makes it real, tangible. A confession of sin. It would be a free relinquishment of power, an acceptance of guilt, piling deadweight onto something she can barely shoulder at the moment. It would be too large a betrayal to who she inherently is and, even after everything she’s already done, too devastating to what she and Sherlock have. It would be defeat.

Loving Jamie Moriarty is something, if Joan had the option, she would never do again, but that's the thing, isn't it? Joan didn't choose to feel this way—or, at least, didn’t expect to. 

She knows she hasn't exactly been a passive player in the game they’ve been playing. She should still be held accountable (and she is, by Sherlock and by Joan herself). She didn't choose to love Moriarty, but she allowed Moriarty the opportunity to facilitate it and continues to do so. Joan  _let_   _it happen_. 

So if she had the chance to do it all again, she would never have allowed Moriarty close enough for her to fall, because the woman is intoxicating. That is ultimately how their perverse, demented version of _love_ can be defined; it is the same love an alcoholic reserves for a full glass, an addict for needles, a smoker for lighters. A perpetually curious Joan and a smiling Moriarty, indulging and enabling and relishing in the instances where Joan cannot stop taking. And it’s the same the other way around. To Moriarty, Joan is an itch she will always want to scratch. The one temptation she has yet to rise above. An exhilarating game she aches to win though dreads to end.

Oh, how the tables have turned. Sherlock, the sober companion to perch on her shoulder, warding off her demons, her addiction, the devil herself; Moriarty’s list of sins whispered into her other ear in a hopeless, desperate rush. This time, he’s the one begging her to leave, to be better.

But she is an enigma, and Joan can't help but stay and pick at the seams that hold Moriarty together just to peek in, just a bit. The feeling she gets when Moriarty allows herself to slip bears an uncanny resemblance to that of being given a gold star, or a cookie, as if basic human decency is something Joan had been rewarded for her efforts. It makes her sick to the stomach. 

See, loving Jamie Moriarty feels a lot like being suffocated. Slow and painful, and Joan perfectly aware of what is happening. It feels like sinking into an ocean that's midway through a storm, and sputtering for air even though she knows she's going to sink no matter how much she tries not to. A sea of liquid cement swallowed and caged in her chest, and solidifying, dragging her down like an anchor, lungs burning for a breath of relief.

She thinks she might die there, in the embrace of an unfeeling woman, holding limply to her scarred wrists. 

Where Sherlock has prevailed, she has failed. 

Moriarty is a habit she can't quite shake and she's in the dark, choking. 

"—I can feel it. You're staring."

"I'm drowning in this."

This is the closest she will ever get to a confession of love. Moriarty understands; they have spoken at length about many a topic and, given that Moriarty is a pathological narcissist at best, discussion of what they share is not something they are strangers to. Now, however, she seems content to stay silent.

Joan hates it. "Moriarty."

Again, there is a pause. A silence that threatens to swallow Joan whole. It's like all the air has been sucked out of the room, and this is it, the feeling again: suffocating, quivering at what’s to come, in fear or anticipation or a sick mix of the two. 

Joan squints up at the ceiling, flat on her back, and sees nothing.

"It's Jamie," finally, she says, cold and clear. 

Joan resists the urge to point out that according to their conversations, there is not a single difference between _Jamie_ and Moriarty, or Irene, for that matter.

It's a pointless avenue to go down. Jamie is stubborn about these things, wilfully ignorant just so she can keep dragging out their game. So, Joan says nothing. It doesn't matter either way, because Jamie knows what's running through her head anyway.

She’s gotten better at deciphering Joan and it's exceedingly irritating. Though, Joan is hesitant to call it a devastating loss on her part because she has been exceptional at getting under Jamie’s skin and wreaking havoc from the start; Jamie is simply catching up.

Jamie sighs, then placatingly: "Relax, dear Joan."

Joan almost scoffs. That's rich coming from her. The woman she loves is all stiff back and sharp angles. "I just said that  _I'm drowning_ ," she says again, peeved, turns her head in Jamie's general direction. "It's kind of hard to relax."

"Care to explain?"

She doesn't, actually. She tries to anyway. "I'm... losing." She winces and Jamie makes a sound of amusement. "I'm losing _myself_. My whole grip on reality. I feel like I'm going to drown."

"I won't let that happen," Jamie says resolutely. Then, there's a sigh emitted through a nose that Joan had once trailed a finger down in a rare moment of peace, of concession. "I can't save you. Won't."

Lying and then making amends. That's how Jamie likes it. Always lying first.

Jamie doesn't understand, and it’s ironic—that’s exactly how they got here in the first place, with a lack of understanding and an intense, mutual yearning to remedy that. Joan turns her back and the covers make a fuss of it in the silence of the room.

Jamie shuffles closer, lithely, quietly. An arm reaches over the back of her head, tangling briefly with her hair before a soft palm falls over her jaw and blankets the hollow under the rut of it. 

Joan likes Jamie's hands (this, she would also never voice) because they are small, warm, and impossibly gentle. Everything Jamie herself is not. It's hard to reconcile the two. She doesn't like to think about the sheer amount of people that have undoubtedly suffered at the mercy of those hands. It makes Joan's heart ache, clenching, wedged tight between two constricting walls. Makes her want to breathe in a great breath of fresh air and forget about it all.

Jamie leans closer, ducking her head, and presses her forehead to the nape of Joan's neck. 

"I can't save you," Jamie murmurs against Joan's upper back, breath hot and wet. "Because I'm drowning in you too."

Lie first, rectify later. Deceit is Jamie's lifeboat. 

In this twisted metaphor, she would have arranged several contingencies that pointedly don't include Joan, but it would be okay because, for a brief moment, they sink together. Also, Joan thinks briefly, she has a knack for ruining Jamie's plans.

"I'm tired." Somehow, she curls into a smaller ball, knees pulled right under her chin. 

The upward twitch at Jamie's lips is subtle against her skin and the hand on her face curls, blunt nails grazing lightly as she pulls it down, over chin, shoulder, elbow, to Joan's waist. 

"You don't believe me."

Jamie is usually so volatile but here, now, in the dark and flush against Joan, she is almost tender. Joan loves her for it and wants to shrink away in disgust at the same time.

“Did you expect me to?”

Jamie chuckles and it echoes in Joan's ribcage. “No tricks, no plans, no  _games_. Not this time.”

She inhales, feels strangely numb. It takes a moment, the words suddenly bulldozing through Joan's confusion, but then she's smiling for the first time in so long. It's devoid of any real joy and stretches oddly across her face, and oh how she _aches_. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a bearing of teeth.

“Then this is done.”

Sharp; immediate: “I didn’t say that.”

“But you did.”

After a moment of consideration, Moriarty loosens her grip. “Oh.” A breathy laugh escapes her. “So it seems that I have.”

Without their games, what they have ceases to exist.

The last round is coming to a close and Joan can only shut her eyes, sucking air into her lungs, and wait for it to be over.

Inexplicably, Joan remembers her mother and how she always smells vaguely of herbs. Joan remembers blessings murmured in a language she barely has a grasp on. Her mother took her to temple once and pointed at statues of Chinese spirits that Joan had ignored so she could, instead, stare curiously at the table where they sold the incense. She'd been breathing through the collar of her shirt, watching the smoke swirl and spiral into nothing, when her mother had twisted her hand and yanked her away to pray.

The game can end, but Moriarty will come back; they both know it. She isn’t the type to leave loose ends untied.

“Joan—”

”I know.” She’s never been as spiritual as her mother had always wanted anyway. 

Moriarty suddenly feels too sticky against her. 

Joan recites the steps to recovery in her head and thinks of anything she can remember from the pamphlets she’d browsed, waiting in the hall while Sherlock attended a meeting. What comes next won’t be easy, but it can’t be as hard as what would happen if she stayed.

“I'm tired.” She is. Of the two, Joan has always been more open to truth, doesn't see it as something that one must always escape. (Though, she will admit that there are times in which doing so is justified.)

She is so very _tired_ of the things that plague her thoughts: the what-ifs, Sherlock's face twisted into a kind of agony she has never seen before, and Moriarty's delicate hands wrapped around a gun with an intimacy that can only ever be foreign to Joan.

A tongue swipes across lips, wetting them, pressed to skin. The familiar curve of a grin felt against her back. A soft flutter of warm air down the bumps of her spine. The weight of an arm draped over the dip of her belly. Joan drowns and loathes simultaneously. 

"Then sleep."

Joan makes a noise, an acknowledgement, but doesn't reply otherwise. She feels empty, has nothing more to offer, in words or anything else. 

"Goodnight," a barely audible murmur, exhaled.

It's unnatural, the resignation in the voice of a woman so accustomed to victory. To Joan, it is the sweetest of lullabies.

And still, she dreams fitfully, plagued by nightmares. 

(Dreams of another life where she and Jamie discuss premeditated plans with Sherlock over a cups of coffee. Another life where they shoot playful quips at each other and their game is something harmless, the promise of footing the next bill as the highest stake. Another life where there's no dark European hotel room, no deliberate closeness as a ploy to best the other. No restitution in the absence of the condition that guarantees its existence: the lie.)

She's glad for the reprieve when she awakens. Sweat clings to her forehead. Her right-hand clenches into a vice grip just as she sits up and heaves in a breath. 

The spot next to her is cold and she uncurls her hand. Empty. 

She's relieved, wants to shed tears of genuine joy, and feels bile rise up her throat, wants to sob against the marble flooring in the five-star ensuite. Where before she was drowning, now she is bereft. 

Like, though she is glad to be off a sinking ship, out of the unforgiving waters, she still mourns the loss of what could have been, of the things left behind.

In the end, she doesn’t shed a single tear, but she shivers under the blankets and stays one more night before booking a oneway flight back to New York. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> like i said, this is one of my old fics and its almost 1am here so if u spot any mistakes lemme know and im ALWAYS open to constructive criticism especially with these 2 bc i havent tackled any pairing as complex as these 2 before!!
> 
> pls anything abt characterization or abt how many cliches ive shoved into 2k words or like.. general comments.....


End file.
